When Will We Have Time to Write – Tags: authors, multitasking, writers life, writers on writing, writing, writing tips
Article | Writers’ Life: When you have to juggle day jobs and chores with finding time to write and promote your writing – a day in the life of a writers couple
Content and images for social media posts researched – check
Engaged with social media followers – check
The next social media posts scheduled – check
Answered writing-related emails – check
Watched the latest YouTube video on how to market our book(s) and what tools to use – check
Fiddled with our website (again) to make it slightly better — check
Wrote blog posts (mental note – schedule some time to publish and share on social media) – check
You’ve got to be kidding. Is that the time? Now we need to go and… [Delete as applicable]
Make coffee
Do the day job
Make coffee
Cook tea
Make coffee
Exercise
Coffee time?
Spend time together
Coffee
Do the housework (aka read as housework is just too boring)
No more coffee, because…
Sleep!
Where did time go? And when are we actually going to get around to doing some actual writing??
Sound familiar?
We had and still have many days like this. You may organise your life well already, others have to work at it – we know we do. But this was the dilemma we are in, and still are trying to manage with developing an, at least more successful, writing career.
One of us, Jon, under his pen name Miles Etherton, wrote four novels – of which one is published, The Codex File – and a trilogy in the re-drafting stage – and that’s something we’re both incredibly proud of. It’s easy to forget that sometimes. Even if no one else likes or even reads the books, Jon has written not one but FOUR books!
But that’s not just what we aspire to. We’ve been looking for the holy grail of trying to balance a full-time job with being present with my partner and developing my writing career. But let’s not kid ourselves – IT IS HARD.
We’re doing the research, reading the books, watching the YouTube videos of other authors finding their way and listening to the interviews about the mistakes to avoid. [SPOILER – we have and probably will make some of those even though we’re aware of them!]
Where Caz provides author services working from home, Jon is lucky in his professional life; he has 25 years of communications and marketing experience. While none of this guarantees his books will ever be best-selling, at least he, and Caz, know what is involved, and we can do many of the things that are needed.
But we still come up against the perennial problem of having enough time to write.
To get on top of this problem, we’re putting the following techniques in (according to what Jon uses in his day job) into action:
Treating my marketing like a project – yes, that sounds REALLY BORING, but one of the key points of project management is breaking things down into manageable chunks.
Having a clear plan for our social media posts to help grow and engage with other writers and fiction fans – with this in place we used to schedule our posts but have to get back in the habit as it gives us greater flexibility, visibility, and engagement.
Using web-based tools to store our “to-do list”, notes, ideas and plans – as well as the bonus of it being automatically backed up to the cloud – imagine losing all our work.
Doing the research and learning from the vast amount of information available online, and particularly on YouTube while doing mundane tasks such as food preparation or cooking. We both do it – who said men can’t multitask?
And what has all of this done? It’s allowed us to block out time [and yes, you need to commit to blocking out specific times] to write.
Ah, deep breath and relax. Well, until we remind ourselves that we have to publish this post and share it on social media!
How are you managing the challenge of writing and marketing your work? What’s worked for you and what’s a real no-no?
Thanks for reading!
Jon & Caz Cole
This article has also been posted on Medium.